Documentary Images 
At the heart of this website are three amazing sets of images: one drawn by an anonymous Japanese artist sometime between 1854 and 1906, one by an American artist, William Heine, first published in 1855, and a set of broadsides by anonymous Japanese creators. The artists have the same subject - the visit by Matthew Perry and his expedition to Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century; yet each artist works within a different artistic and cultural tradition. The artists clearly had different relationships to events, and chose to record different scenes. Together their work provides wonderfully evocative pictures that help bring the nineteenth century to life.
Brown University students have examined these images; consulted the English-language record about the Perry voyage; and written about what they think the images mean. We hope to post other student work, some of it from Japan, on the site to expand the range of possible readings of the images.
We are interested in how to use visual images as historical evidence; in the different meanings attached to cultural exchange by the peoples involved; and in the cultural history of American-Japanese relations. We sought to use new media to make these images available to more people so the conversation begun by the scroll and by the Heine pictures at Brown could be extended to other teachers and students.
- Click on any thumbnail to view that image.
- Click on the "Student Essays" link below any image to see what Brown students thought about it.
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